EU watchdog takes on Commission over ‘expert’ groups

The EU’s public watchdog has launched a new attack on the European Commission over the institution’s reluctance to allow full transparency of its controversial use of external advisers on key legislation.

In a report published Tuesday, the European Ombudsman called on the Commission to publish minutes of meetings held by more than 800 expert groups formed to provide input on legislation. The move represents a direct challenge to the Commission, which has already told the ombudsman it is unwilling to adopt such recommendations.

“[C]itizens have a right to know fully how expert advice feeds into EU decision-making,” Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said in a statement Tuesday. “This entails knowing what input has been given and by whom, whether by national representatives, industry, civil society or others.”

The EU watchdog’s conclusions call for the default settings of the Commission’s expert groups to be set to complete transparency, warning that published minutes should be “as meaningful as possible” and set out “the positions expressed by the [group] members.”

But the Commission had already rejected that advice last June, telling O’Reilly expert group decisions were made “by consensus, in a spirit of mutual trust” and they should continue to take place behind closed doors, unless committee members expressly requested the process be open to scrutiny.

“In order to preserve the smooth functioning of expert groups, the Commission is of the opinion that the current arrangements… allow the general public to be adequately informed and, therefore, should be maintained,” Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said in a letter.

The conclusions of the inquiry suggest that while the Commission has been willing to throw the expert-group process open to greater scrutiny, it isn’t willing to go as far as the ombudsman is.

Expert groups are established at the initial stages of the legislative process and provide often highly technical advice to help the Commission shepherd a bill from conception to implementation. They can be made up of individuals, organizations and representatives of national governments.

Industry lobbyists eagerly take part in expert groups — especially at the initial stages of the legislative life cycle, when officials tasked with bringing proposals to life are open to suggestions. However, NGO lobbyists complain they are under-represented on these panels and lack the resources to keep up with the workload.

O’Reilly, who investigates administrative complaints against EU institutions, launched a strategic inquiry into the composition of expert groups in May 2014, amid concerns the legislative advisory mechanism had come to be dominated by lobbyists and vested interests.

Timmermans responded to the ombudsman’s first criticism of the expert group process in June 2015, saying he agreed “in principle” that the call for applications for every expert group be made public and to encourage experts to sign up to the EU joint transparency register.

Another battleground between O’Reilly and the Commission has been the ombudsman’s demand that the Commission try to establish expert groups that ensure “balanced representation of all relevant interests in each expert group.”

Timmermans made a number of concessions on this point, including a willingness to move away from the Commission’s tradition of appointing expert group members itself in favor of making public calls for applications.

However, the Commission also stated that representation “cannot be an exercise in arithmetic” and warned the make-up of the groups depended “on the type of expertise required” and directorates-general should still be able to select members they believe can provide “real added value.”

The ombudsman, who has no power to impose her recommendations, has given the Commission an April 30 deadline to explain its response to her strategic inquiry.